First published in Art and Soul Magazine 2006
In Dostoyevsky’s most popular novel, Crime and Punishment, the anti-hero Raskolnikov murders an elderly pawn-broker for his own selfish gain lead by his Übermensch-esque philosophy and a hunger to extricate himself from his impoverished surroundings. The vivid detail and chillingly accurate psychological potrait of a killer shocked an 1860s audience and secured Dostoyevsky’s fame worldwide. But the much over-looked prelude to Crime and Punishment, "Notes from Underground" premiers the character of the embittered, out-cast intellectual that would later become Raskolnikov as well as marking Dostoyevsky’s transition from semi-autobiographist and Gogol inspired novelist, to a mature writer of timeless literature in his own right.
Notes from Underground is a darkly comic novella, it follows the unamed main character (often refered to as the Underground Man) firstly through his own cynical life philosophy, and then through a serious of annecdotes (The Story of the Falling Sleet), which explain what lead him to take this unpleasant and bitter worldview, what he calls living his life "Underground".
An Underground Man is intelligent, but out of touch with his animal instincts; he would rather write a withering short story about his enemies than barge past them on the street when he is annoyed. The polar opposite of the Underground man is the "Spontaneous Man of Action", who when faced with a problem, charges at it head first like a bull. The Underground Man’s struggle to decide which role is better peppers much of the first half of the book, but a reading of the second half makes it quite clear who generally comes out on top.
Like Dostoyevsky’s short tale, "A Nasty Story", where the main character gets blind drunk at a wedding party and ends up sleeping in the bridal bed, Notes from Underground is filled with embarrasing and cringeworthy moments that make the reader’s toes curl. Although the main character is an anti-hero, you grow to sympathise with him as he decends deeper and deeper underground and into his own negative mindset.
Notes from Underground is a masterpiece in outsider literature which in Jessie Coulson’s colourful translation seems just as cogent today as the day it was written. Unlike some of Dostoyevsky’s other novels, not a single word is wasted, every end is tied up, and every idea explained. It is the first modern Russian novel, the first piece of existentialist philosophy, it is a sobering fable for any would-be melodramatic tortured artist and most of all, it is simply a brilliant book.
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